Cheryl Strayed didn’t want to let her children jump off a mountain in France, but nine-year-old Carver made a case for it.

She was sure fear would get the better of him and his eight-year-old sister, Bobbi, if they went paragliding off Mont Blanc that summer five years ago. That’s why she told them they weren’t allowed to go.

“Actually what I thought was, ‘That’s exactly what I wanted to teach you.’ ”

As a nine-year-old, her son knew to live courageously.

As a 26-year-old, Strayed did, too — hiking 94 days and 1,700 kilometres from Mojave, Calif., to the Bridge of the Gods, on the border between Washington and Oregon.

“Yes I was (afraid), but I just decided not to let my fear be the thing that made all of my choices,” said Strayed.

“I was afraid of any number of the best things that I’ve done in my life.”

Strayed was one of three keynote speakers at the University of Regina’s 10th annual Inspiring Leadership forum, themed “defying the odds.” Elizabeth Smart and Jann Arden also spoke Wednesday, while Mira Sorvino was part of a dinner event on Tuesday.

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Strayed’s story of that hike is told in detail in her 2012 memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. (It is also a movie, Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon.)

“It began with my mother,” said Strayed.

Pregnant, Strayed’s mother Bobbi married at 19 — it was 1965 and she didn’t see any other options. Ten years later, Bobbi fled a violent and abusive marriage, with three children in tow.

She was an inspiration, always looking for joy and beauty when her life had such hardships.

“’If life is hard, if life is difficult … There’s always a sunrise, there’s always a sunset, it’s up to you, Cheryl, to find it,’ ” said Strayed. “Usually when she said that, I would roll my eyes because I was a surly teenager.”

When Bobbi died of lung cancer in March 1991, it sent her daughter on a self-destructive path. Three years later, she realized “wrecking herself” was no way to honour her mother.

So she went on a long hike in 1995, hoping it would cure her of her grief.

Throughout her journey, she chanted to herself, “I’m not afraid,” even though she was.

“I’m going to pretend that I’m bold, I’m going to pretend I’m strong, I’m going to pretend I’m qualified. And what happens when you shift that thinking, is that little voice that says ‘I can’t, I shouldn’t, I won’t,’ it becomes ‘I can, I will and I’m going to.’ Your life changes.”

A shy girl who described herself as “plain old vanilla” — not rebellious in the least — Smart worried that her parents would have no idea what happened to her, or that Mitchell had killed them before abducting her.

She also worried she would forget them, as her kidnappers attempted to strip her of her identity.

“Today seems to be a day about mothers, actually,” Smart reflected.

“My mother, she was everything to me, and I never, ever wanted to forget her.”

Her mother once told her, “I always will be your mother and I will always love you … Nothing will ever change that, even death will never change that.”

Until remembering this moment, Smart had believed her family would shun her because rape had “ruined” her virtue: Abstinence until marriage, she was taught.

With new hope and resolve, she decided to do “whatever it took to survive.”

She withdrew into herself to not feel the pain — physical and mental. She was so far into “survival mode” that, she said, when police finally found and questioned her, she couldn’t readily answer them.

Smart counts herself lucky that her captors were strangers. She did not know Mitchell, although, according to media reports, he had done odd jobs for the Smart family at one point.

“The majority of abuse, the majority of sexual violence, of rape and kidnapping, comes from people that you know, people that you trust,” said Smart.

“I am so grateful, I am so lucky that I was raped by a stranger, that I was not raped in my home; my home is still my safe place.

“I don’t have to worry about going to family reunions and worrying that I’ll see my perpetrator.”

She said reasons like these are often why sexual assault victims are reluctant to speak out.

Smart’s experience has given her a voice, she said, and a passion for women’s rights, child safety and standing up for victims of abuse.

A mother of three young children, Smart said she won’t hide her experience from them.